


more things in heaven and earth

by blondsak



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (until he physically doesn't), Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Experimental Style, Gen, Magical Realism, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Precious Peter Parker, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 09:47:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28936515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blondsak/pseuds/blondsak
Summary: “You can’t keep doing this,” Tony says from where he's sitting beside the lab table, shaking his head at Peter as he watches him expertly clip a leaf so he can continue stitching up his side.Peter shrugs, then winces when his head gives a particularly painful throb at the movement. “Why not? Grown just fine this far.”(He doesn't mention that those born with willow cores rarely live beyond fifty. The wood is not bendy, and thus easily broken. But as the midwife reminded his mother, real strength lies in roots. And willow tree roots are very strong indeed.)
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 28
Kudos: 97





	more things in heaven and earth

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Bethany for the beta, Grace for the suggestions, and seek and gru for their cheerleading <3
> 
> Title shamelessly stolen from the Bard, who very much enjoyed incorporating elements of magical realism into his plays, though the term itself would not be coined for another 300+ years.

_“Do you know,”_ The Copper Lady asks, “ _how many times you can die for another person?”_

Peter glances up at the stars from over the points of her crown, and for a moment he can see not white twinkles but fiery rubies, nestled between a brilliant gold that flecks like liquid mercury at the edges of his vision. 

He looks down again at the endless expanse of water, the ceaseless waves that crash upon the rocky beaches of his home. The Copper Lady’s kingdom. He wonders, not for the first time, when the ghost ships will stop sailing in alongside the boats of the wayfarers. When the ghosts themselves will stop showing up entirely, if ever.

He doesn’t think The Copper Lady worries over things like that. Green as she has become, she will always be here to greet those new to her shores regardless, her torch raised for the living and the dead alike. The willow branch encasing Peter’s heart gives a gentle tug at the thought. 

_Do you know how many times you can die for another person?_

“No, not yet,” Peter answers honestly, “but I will.

“I will.”

* * *

Not long after his brother and sister-in-law’s funeral, Ben Parker deposits fifty dollars into a custodial savings account. _Peter’s College Fund,_ he names it using the bank’s glitchy website. 

Try as he might, Ben never manages to save more than a few hundred bucks. First, there’s the emergency room trip when Peter breaks his twig of an arm trying out his school friend Ned’s skateboard, which brings the account back down to near where it started. Ben puts in twenty here and there for a while, but the recession—and the resulting loss of his job—ends that quickly. The final nail in the proverbial coffin comes when Peter is diagnosed with asthma, his breaths creaking like an old wooden floor. Crappy insurance means May and Ben can barely afford his medication, much less setting money aside for future educational opportunities.

The last time Ben checks the account, he can't help but find his efforts wanting. The total won’t even cover a fourth of the cost of a semester’s textbooks, he thinks regretfully. With a sigh he signs out of the app, which even after a decade of technological improvements remains just as unreliable as the bank website before it had always been. He wishes he’d done better by Peter, provided more. Vows to try harder from now on. 

Twenty-two days later, Ben Parker lies splayed out on wet concrete, bleeding out from a bullet to the chest. He has a panicked nephew at his side, a deep love in his soul, and—last but certainly not least—a wish buried in his heart that he sends out into the world with his final breath, for anyone to answer.

He dies just as the rain turns to coins, falling like manna from heaven. 

He dies with the taste of pennies on his lips.

* * *

Occasionally, Spider-Man scatters petals around the city. There is no rhyme or reason to it that the people can find, but every so often they’ll be going about their day or night when they’ll feel the lightest flutter on their hat, or in their hair. They’ll pull the petal down from its perch, marvel at its perfect weight in their palm, feather-light silk as colorfully vibrant as their flowers—lavender, bluebonnet, lily and myriad others. They’ll look up and maybe if they’re lucky they’ll catch a flash of the vigilante just before he flings himself out of sight once more. 

If they notice how their hero never waves on these excursions, how sometimes he swings one-handed while clutching his side, or if it sometimes looks like he was attacked by a tree, well—

That part is left out of the folktales.

* * *

“You can’t keep doing this,” Tony says from where he's sitting beside the lab table, shaking his head at Peter as he watches him expertly clip a leaf so he can continue stitching up his side. 

Peter shrugs, then winces when his head gives a particularly painful throb at the movement. “Why not? Grown just fine this far.”

(He doesn't mention that those born with willow cores rarely live beyond fifty. The wood is not bendy, and thus easily broken. But as the midwife reminded his mother, real strength lies in roots. And willow tree roots are very strong indeed.)

Tony narrows his lone eye. He’s been sporting the half-mask-half-face look ever since Colonel Rhodes walked off the field in Germany, all healed and of his own accord. Peter thinks it makes him look distinguished; Tony seems to have no opinion on the matter, unless you count complaining about the way the metal squeaks every time he yawns.

“Yeah, with significant emphasis on _this_ _far_ ,” Tony replies dryly.

Peter pauses in his work, glancing up at Tony with a teasing grin. “Why worry when I have you around to watch out for my dumb ass?”

In response Tony raises his metal legs—the first transformed after saving Pepper from the fire, the second after waking Happy from the sleep of the near-dead—and motions to them with his flesh arm. “Don’t count on it for long, kid.”

Peter’s lips thin at the truth in that statement. He doesn’t reply, just goes back to his work. He grimaces as he plucks a small stem out of the wound that had risen in his momentary distraction, tossing it onto the floor.

“May wants to have you and Pepper over for dinner soon,” Peter says when he finishes his stitches, grabbing a broom to sweep up the overgrowth with.

“Does she?” Tony says lightly, sounding apprehensive. “And how has she been lately?”

Peter shrugs. “Better. Still pissed at both of us for lying, but her lemon cookies hardly tasted bitter at all last night, so I think she’s getting over it.”

“Angry Bitters is better than Grief Rot, at least,” Tony remarks. “The date loaf back when I first met you was… something else.”

Peter frowns slightly, shrugging again. He’ll never forget the taste of May’s grief. Never wants to.

Tony clears his throat, Peter not missing the mechanical _whir_ of tiny gears that accompanies it. There’s regret in his mentor’s voice when he adds, “But nobody can be blamed for their grief, of course.”

“No,” Peter agrees, breathing low and long. His gaze goes distant, eyes turning an earthier shade of his usual oak brown. “Not for grief.”

* * *

Here, a folktale from the city:

_In the village of Forest Hills, a little girl jumps rope on the sidewalk, her mother just inside. Through the open screen door, she listens to the sharp cracks of the plastic coil against pavement kissed hot by summer sun._

_The mother hears a sudden gasp, and it’s enough that she glances out the back kitchen window, only to see her daughter staring up at the sky, wonder and awe stretched across her cherubic features. Clutched in her sweaty hand, caught in her braid, and swept at her feet are Spider-Man’s petals._

_“Gather them,” the mother instructs, not bothering to glance up herself but seeing in the corner of her eye a shadow run across the apartment building next door before it’s gone. “Gather them up before the wind does, child, quick!”_

_That night the mother shows her daughter how to press petals into books. She tells her to be patient, and to leave them until they’re dry. Until they’ve become a fragile, razor-thin keepsake to be carefully pasted into a scrapbook where, in a few days, the daughter will scribble in the significance of the petals before putting the book back where it belongs._

_And all too soon after that day, the mother will take that same scrapbook off from the shelf where the daughter placed it. She will sit down with dust on her arms and along her breast, a band of it around her neck, and she will glance through the book with wide unseeing eyes, photos and memories flashing of a tiny life that is no more._

_Her attention will only refocus when the next page sticks. She will pull at it, tears gathering from frustration until finally the page rips. “Spider-Man’s flowers” will be written in a lilting, childish scrawl, but there will be no more bright petals._

_And the mother will run her fingers delicately over the browned, withered decay, and mourn for Spider-Man too._

* * *

After he returns from the ruins of the fortress in the forest and a Titan’s vanquishing (a much longer tale for another time), a plain white envelope with Peter’s name on it shows up in his and May’s mail box. The letter within is perfunctory, but the message is clear: Peter, who is now legally over the age of eighteen according to the laws of the city, has been granted ownership of the savings account opened in his name by Benjamin F. Parker years and years before.

“Oh, yeah, I think I knew about that,” May remarks idly over dinner, the lasagna a cloud of smooth flavors on Peter’s tongue. She must have had a really good day. “I’m sure I took over the account after his death, but everything from that time is so foggy now, I don’t quite remember.”

Peter nods, thinking it rather odd but not commenting. It had long been his perception that May had been diligent about finances in the direct aftermath of Ben’s death, even when she’d been scatterbrained about nearly everything else. But then again, Peter had only been fourteen. Who knows what he’d missed.

That evening he downloads the bank’s app and plugs in the account information. But when he goes to open the page, he gets nothing but an error message from the bank, with a curt apology and a suggestion to check again later.

Peter checks again the next day, and the same error pops up. With a frustrated sigh he closes the app, and soon forgets all about the account.

* * *

Peter sits on the porch at the lake house, watching Morgan run around the beach and sipping at the lemonade Pepper had brought out. 

_“I want you to know that I don’t regret it,”_ a mechanical voice next to him says.

Peter turns to look at Iron Man, but there’s no tell to be found there, not anymore. Just the faceplate, blank and unreadable as always. All the same, he knows what the man means, if he can rightfully still be called a physical man. On Iron Man’s chest plate the arc reactor pulses with a gentle light, like a heartbeat.

Peter doesn’t answer for long moments, instead looking over to where Morgan continues to play. “I know.”

 _“Then why do you feel responsible for it?”_ Iron Man asks. _“It was my choice.”_

Peter closes his eyes and thinks. Thinks of The Copper Lady alone on her island, forever welcoming the journeyers, forever staring out into the endless seas. Thinks of the warmth of human touch, and the ability of the elders to wrinkle with age. Thinks of Tony giving up the last of himself for him, to save _him._

Peter thinks all these things, feels the willow laced through his heart twist that much tighter, and says nothing.

* * *

Peter remembers the account again when he starts college. His scholarship covers tuition but nothing else, including the overpriced textbooks he needs. Peter searches through his phone until he finds the app, only for the exact same message error from over a year before to appear. He tries calling the bank but it endlessly rings and rings, not even a generic message clicking through. Finally, after checking the potential overdraft fees and weighing the cost-benefits, Peter takes a chance and moves three-hundred dollars from the savings account into his checking.

The transfer goes through, and two days later Peter has his textbooks. Three months later he does it again, when he can’t quite make his rent. And another six months after that, when May’s sixtieth birthday sneaks up on him. 

(She insisted on making her own cake. So delicious was each morsel that all in attendance cried with joy.)

Eventually the pattern can no longer be denied: the transfers always go through. The error message never changes. The clenched branch linked with Peter’s heart seizes with recognition, then loosens. 

He closes the account the very next day, before his mind can be swayed.

Before he can forget what it’s like to hold the bouquet of someone else’s precious life in your grip, only to let it slip through your fingers.

* * *

_“Do you know how many times you can die for another person?”_ The Copper Lady asks him again during another visit, another time. The stars that once glowed ruby-red when he first pondered this puzzle, now glimmer a light blue. 

“Yes,” Peter answers honestly, “you can die just once.”

The Copper Lady signals her approval. _“Which means…”_

“It means I must choose wisely,” he replies. Underneath the sturdy elm of his ribs, his willow core blossoms with leaves, the overlapping webs of its roots settling ever deeper.

“And I will,” Peter promises the whole of the wide, wondrous world. 

“I will.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you would like to learn more about magical realism literary style, here is a [good primer](http://michellewittebooks.com/2015/09/elements-of-magical-realism/).
> 
> Comments are cherished like the golden treasures they are. Come hang out with me on [tumblr](https://blondsak.tumblr.com).


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